Comment of the Week: The freeway expansion fight is Metro’s fault

Tell me about the forest, not the individual trees. Which is to say that I am always drawn to comments which give me a big picture understanding of why things are the way they are. Take the Interstate Bridge replacement and freeway widening projects. My eyes go over all the text BikePortland has published. I look at the diagrams. But, frustratingly, I don’t retain the information. I’m not proud of that.

But what helps me are comments like what ITOTS wrote this week, into Jonathan’s interview with Je Amaichi on the Interstate Bridge freeway project. ITOTS brings up Metro, and its Regional Travel Demand Model, and goes on to say that it is this model which says we need a $10B freeway expansion, and which gives “cover” to the DOTs. He ends with a link to a Jarret Walker blog post.

Metro’s Regional Travel Demand model wasn’t on my radar, but it sure gives me an understanding of the larger problem. And it’s those nuggets of insight which keep folks reading the BP comments sections.

Here’s what ITOTS had to say:

When it comes to the DEIS, Amaechi said the over-arching concern is its “defeatist way of thinking.” In other words, she thinks it assumes the status quo of car and truck-centric transportation will exist well into the future (projects and models in the DEIS are based on 2045)…“This idea that we’re alleviating congestion by adding lanes is something that has been disproven many, many times,” she added. “And in fact, the opposite has been proven to be true. Induced demand is slightly mentioned [in the DEIS], but it’s not addressed in a realistic way.”

Two things:
First, even without any projected growth in traffic, the DOTs/IBR can and would determine that for safety and operational reasons they require the new auxiliary lanes. They can make a case for auxiliary/merge lanes based on close spacing of interchanges, short merge distances, and grades alone. Given the ultimate judge is Federal Highways they would easily win any dispute there. The DOTs don’t even need to have a fight about whether or not induced demand exists or is accounted for because they don’t have to rely on increased traffic volumes to justify their wider design.

Second, it’s actually Metro that allows/requires them to build a wider highway. Metro maintains the regional travel demand model and the list of projects and programs that go into it. When the impact of all of the region’s planned projects and programs are tallied up, Metro’s travel demand model is still saying that auto traffic is going to increase across the Columbia river by year 2045 (or pretty much any other year in the future) such that doing nothing leads to carmaggedon. IBR is required to plan to accommodate that predicted future, to study the impacts of not doing so (which is part of what is in the SDEIS), and to design a facility that meets DOT mobility standards—hours of congestion on the main line, level of service at intersections.

So go tell Metro to fix its modeling, principally by adding projects and programs that get the region to the mobility, safety, and sustainability outcomes we want without these kinds of mega projects—at least inside the reductive reality of the model. And then fund the projects that are going to get people to move around the region differently. It’s Metro’s model that tells us we need this $10B project. That’s all the cover the DOTs need.  Making plans to bring about a future that you say you don’t actually want to come to pass is absurd. But thems the rules (currently).

There are other (saner and still rigorous) ways.

Thank you ITOTS. It’s hard to stay abreast of those projects, so your bigger picture helps. You can read ITOTS comment under the original post.